Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

When a nation's economy is collapsing as the stock market catapulted in the face of the high tech bust, what did the Republicans do?  First, they announced huge tax cuts for the wealthy that they proclaimed would prop up business with the Reagan "trickle down theory" giving the masses jobs.

That announced strategy constituted Republicans speaking out of both sides of their mouths.  Meanwhile Ford and General Motors were outsourcing manufacturing jobs to Mexico and India for cheaper labor costs.

Now comes genius Greenspan's brilliant idea.  Demolish the dollar's power.  How?  Slash interest rates to their lowest level in 40 years.  Give savers the shaft in the form of 2 percent interest on their CD's.

Did they decide that all those older citizens who saved cash for retirement didn't need cash as much as power hungry Republicans needed votes?

The Republican Administration needed to make the economy roar if they wanted to remain in power.  As interest rates for home mortgages declined to a 40-year low, millions of unqualified people decided they would buy and sell their homes flip over style.  Instead of risking what many felt were Wall Street thieves, real estate was the new get rich quick scheme.

Perhaps one reason for such resentment was not only huge losses with the spectacular tech market stock crash.   But the Wall Street egomaniacs applaud themselves daily for their Wall Street gambling casino they call the stock market.

In New York City some studio apartments soared to a million dollars.  The legendary Hew York City Hotel Pierre got into the real estate high-powered gambling act, putting up their penthouse ballroom for sale at a bargain basement figure of just $70 million.  Better act fast before this superb buy is snapped up!

Even the historic Plaza Hotel renovated many floors of this high-priced hotel for condo sales to get into the real estate scam act.  People from almost every city in the U.S.A. jumped into the real estate act, getting equity loans.

The construction industry thrilled to the artificial boom.  With illegal aliens doing the manual labor cheaper than skilled American workers, some of whom, God forbid, even belonged to unions, so much money was saved and the profit margin increased for industry titans.

They had a bonanza deal going.  The dollar lost ground to the British pound.  The pound soared to twice the dollar's falling value.  The Euro, which had been equal to the dollar's value, jumped 40 percent higher than the dollar now.

The English just loved the U.S. fire sale.  They raced to Miami and Fort Lauderdale, buying condos to flip over fast, with many U.S. citizens driven out of the real estate market.

After Hurricane Katrina and Wilma hit reality returned.  Miami had 60,000 condos to sell.  Fort Lauderdale condos and homes dropped to 40 percent.

Millions of truly poor people who could not afford to buy a house obtained interest only loans.  Now more than 2 million more homes and condos are facing foreclosure.  California, Florida and Arizona are especially hard hit.

Playing games with currency value to bring fake short-term prosperity:  Is this your handiwork, Mr. Greenspan?

Foreclosures are up 26 percent from the third quarter of 2006, and this is the kind of economic prosperity that Bush brags about!  It was all as phony as those weapons of mass destruction with which George Bush did his best to ratchet up the nation's hysteria level and lie this nation into the Iraq War.

That is your legacy, Mr. Bush, one riddled with fraud and accented by death.  So you chase around South America or anywhere else, but these journeys will not change the brutal and underlying facts that yours is a legacy of death, debt and widespread destruction.

Your frantic journeys do no more than use up a lot of gas for which taxpayers pay while you blow an excessive volume of hot air wherever you go!

The ultimate question for you, Mr. Bush, is this:  Who listens to a loser?  Who can respect someone whose entire career has been built on a foundation of deceit?